When I was a boy of seven or eight years old, my dad told me a story that I never forgot. He recounted the frightening day of April 2, 1957, when his wife, “Tudy” Mattson, delivered a nine-pound baby at a hospital in Ft. Smith, Arkansas, where Dad was stationed in the army. Tudy was hemorrhaging steadily, her life in grave danger. Dad went into a state of desperate panic. He found a solitary place in the hospital and fell to his knees before God, praying tearfully that his wife of just two years would be spared. As a boy, I could envision it: my father, the big, strong athlete, lowering himself to the floor to beg God’s mercy.
As it turned out, Tudy Mattson outlived her husband by thirty years. I was the nine-pound baby just mentioned. The hospital nurses had dubbed me “The Minnesota Lumberjack,” which, if you knew me these days, would seem silly – I of the slender build. Only a few select times over the years did Dad recount the story of Mom’s near demise on the day of my birth. The memory was, for him, too personal and too sacred to become an item of much repetition or even a point of preaching about the mercies of God or the power of prayer. In any case, he’d planted within me a seed of divine origin, so that the idea of God as a merciful presence in my life felt familiar throughout my boyhood. Sadly, in 1991, Dad died at age 58 from colon cancer, and I still miss him.
In 1959, after finishing military duty in Arkansas, Dad accepted a position as the high school choral director in Marshall, Minnesota. There, our family joined Wesley United Methodist Church, where I learned more about God and the importance of serving others in society. Unfortunately, as the years went by, my spiritual interest faded – diverted by the typical hobbies of a teenage boy: sports, music, and girls (but not schoolwork). One can’t focus on heaven when preoccupied with the world below. Thus, I forgot about God and got caught up playing sports — mainly golf. Plus, the allure of becoming a rock star hit me hard, so daily practice on the ebony Les Paul guitar, given to me by Dad, was a must.
In all these musical and athletic pursuits, I had but one goal: personal success. I was convinced this would win favor with the young ladies at school I so admired. Indeed, not long into my high school career, they had become my idols. Impressing them was top priority. But eventually this was impossible, at least not by the methods I’d chosen. Despite a solid home consisting of two loving parents and three healthy, well-adjusted boys, of which I was eldest, my life eventually cracked apart. I came to realize in my late teens that I wasn’t as singular as I thought. Turns out I wasn’t a top athlete, even in small-town America. Nor was I on the verge of rock stardom. I hadn’t studied hard in high school, so my grades were fair but not superior. I had sunk into a state of mediocrity, a condition I could not stand. I hated the idea of blending into the masses of pedestrian existence. All this time, I had thought of myself as a standout guy and top performer, but such elitism was mostly in my head. Facts were facts: I was average at best.
It was this sense of futility and failure that led me back to the faith of my childhood. I’d been traveling a couple of years with “The Mattsons,” our family band. My brothers and I played music before approving crowds in hotels and nightclubs around the country, and when the tour was over, despair set in. I was 19 and felt blank inside, as though destined for greatness but denied the prize. Additionally, I’d fallen into solipsism, thinking only of myself, the needs of others being simply irrelevant. I lived for me, and that was all.
Image by damien boutin from Pixabay
